Stefan Singer, Director for Energy Policy at WWF, has waded into the comments on Lynas’s formerly-quiet site. Bob Ward is also still at it. (Lynas is asking who exactly Bob Ward is — answer, a PR man for the Grantham Institute). Meanwhile the IPCC staff are rushing to reply to questions as written up by Andy Revkin.

The signs are excellent. As Lynas says:

If the ‘deniers’ are the only ones standing up for the integrity of the scientific process, and the independence of the IPCC, then I too am a ‘denier’. Indeed, McIntyre and I have formed an unlikely double-act, posing a series of questions – together with the New York Times’s Andy Revkin – to the IPCC report’s lead author Professor Ottmar Edenhofer, to which he has yet to respond.

What Mark Lynas wrote is apropos — and pointedly so.

Here’s the scenario. An Exxon-Mobil employee – admittedly an energy specialist with an engineering background – serves as a lead author on an important IPCC report looking into the future of fossil fuels. The Exxon guy and his fellow lead authors assess a whole variety of literature, but select for special treatment four particular papers – one produced by Exxon-Mobil. This paper heralds great things for the future of fossil fuels, suggesting they can supply 80% of the world’s energy in 2050, and this headline is the first sentence of the ensuing IPCC press release, which is picked up and repeated uncritically the world’s media. Pleased, the Exxon employee issues a self-congratulatory press release boasting that his paper had been central to the IPCC effort, and urging the world’s governments to get on with opening up new areas to oil drilling for the benefit of us all.

Well. You can imagine the furore this would cause at Greenpeace. The IPCC would be discredited forever as an independent voice….

Missiles from friends

I wrote about how well it works for us when a passive skeptic asks a sensible point and gets the over-the-top Firey Grand Overreaction. When it comes to changing viewpoints, the missiles from friends are as effective as the polite notes from former enemies. Before this, the rational (but naive) soul thought that the response from friends to the bleeding obvious might be “yes, fair point. We’ll have to do better.” But instead, The Team turns on their former friend: “What the &#*& are you thinking?!” It’s at about this point when the naive get wise, and realize after years of thinking they were free to speak, they were really only free to agree with the establishment message. Their speech, all along, had been bound by invisible ties to the politically correct dictum.

That said, there is a long way to go. Mark still defends Working Group I absolutely: “no one has found a mistake”. But gently, gently I say, give the man a chance. Then we can start pointing out the gaping hole in the empirical evidence for any warming above 1.2 degrees. “Dear Mark, it’s not that there is a mistake, so much as there is a vacuum. It’s that the whole basis for the working group is an assumption that 28 million radiosondes blew away.” Let’s not overwhelm him.

Commenters wish Mark well (as do I), and Rick Bradford sums it up:

Mark,

If you didn’t know before what happens to people who leave a cult, you’re about to find out.

I’ve always said the alarmists were cult-like in the techniques they used – both in establishing the belief system and the measures they put in place to keep people ‘in the fold’. Or should we say, discourage people from leaving the fold. In our context, discouraging disagreement and questioning.

Personal experience – had a long term friend who got caught up in a cult many years ago and as such this became a special interest for me while doing my psychology degree. She and her family managed to extract themselves, but lost their network as they were excommunicated from the warmth and inclusivity of the self-proclaimed ‘in-group’, they were branded evil because the devil had claimed their souls (even I was branded as a voice for the devil simply because I was an outside influence, at Uni and reading non permitted books – not the bible), denigration and humiliation rituals…they got the works. Standard cult practice.

The hardest first step for these people is recognising what they hadn’t seen before. A bit like a goldfish that is suddenly able to see the water they’ve been swimming in, and the parameters of their bowl. Once seen, it changes everything.

1. The movement is over-zealous – and regards its belief system, ideology and practices as Truth.
2. The group is elitist, claiming a superior status and purpose (e.g., to be on a mission to save humanity).
3. The group often prophesies the end of the world.
4. The group promises salvation.
5. Dissent is not tolerated and is even punished.
6. The leadership dictates how members should think, act, and feel. Leaders prescribe how they live, whether to have children, etc
7. The group instructs its members not to read information that is critical of the group.
8. The group has a confrontational ”us-versus-them” mentality that leads to conflict.
9. The leaders do not view themselves as accountable to authorities, even advocating civil disobedience for the higher cause.
10. The group teaches that the ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may lead members to participate in illegal activities.
11. Mind-altering practices, such as the repeated use of propaganda and denunciation sessions are used to suppress doubts. Character assassination is a sure sign of a cult.
12. The group requires members to radically alter the personal activities they had before joining the group.
13. The group is active in bringing in new members.
14. The group is out to make money.

All you need is an email address and a handle to vote on the getup site. If they checked the credentials of the people voting in all their other surveys, they would be in trouble, surely.

Just hit the vote button, enter in the details and select the number of vots. So far it’s gone from 113th ranked a few days ago to 73rd ranked as of now. The believers are starting to argue the toss on the forum, so it must be making them at least a bit squeamish…

Mike – lol re the double tap. I was referring to the film zombieland and the ten rules for survival. Somehow it seems to have relevance when dealing with ideologically driven policy….

Very surprised at how easy it was to comment etc. Not sure if my votes were done properly. Strange to see so many familiar handles as commenters. Made me feel right at home. I somehow think that wasn’t exactly the response GetUp was expecting. Maybe we should all visit on a reagular basis as they do need some facts. I did my best to explain the 97% of scientists subterfuge thanks to one of Jo’s previous threads.

I’m sure there were a few people on this thread working through that list and going tick, tick. In the past when I’ve drawn parallels between belief in CAGW and cults people don’t get it. The difference is that CAGW is a belief system that has gone viral thanks to technology and is also virtual cult-like group. Sign of the times?

Below is a comment I wrote in response to an article by Chris Pearson in the Australian some time back:

Thank you, Mr Pearson, for being one of the few journalists who has actually done his research on this issue. I absolutely agree. Belief in dangerous Anthropogenic Global Warming and its offspring Catastrophic Climate Change (distinct from historically evidenced natural climate variability) will one day be considered as a societal curiosity of our time. It is a bandwagon well past being fashionable and a great example of mass mania. Unlike previous mass manias, like the witch hunts, this one had the technological opportunity to go viral and virtual, infecting not just isolated pockets or populations, but whole countries with the potential to negatively impact the world economy.

I do think though that there are the believers (the easily led and the gullible), and those who recognise they can make a buck from it, which goes to your point 14.

That thread on the Lynas site needs to be saved for posterity.
Before the high church ( of climate change) get onto their innocent disciple and rein him in, with a few home truths about speaking to people outside the cult. It’s only a matter of time… though I look forward to being proven wrong.

To let them do so would be further evidence of the abandonment of Fair Play, which the tragedy of the Thompson’s case so exemplifies. Yet the thrust if that proposal is undoubtedly to save the Greenie Dream.

All joking aside, let us hope that one man waking up to realize 2 + 2 = 4, not 5 will encourage someone else to do likewise. The wall was built one brick at a time and it’s falling the same way, one brick at a time.

Well crakar @#25
if it hadn’t begun. “Stop the carbon tax -…” and just been something more neutral like. Call for Referendum o the carbon tax , it might have got further. But you just know they’re gonna shut it down, because it’s there to embarrass them ‘ not to mention that political objective has already been called for in parliament .

”The valuable and credible work of all scientists is under attack as a result of a noisy misinformation campaign by climate denialists….” the federation’s chief executive officer, Anna-Maria Arabia, said.

So who is this Arabia, so concerned about sceptics undermining the “national building work” and so eager to smear them as “climate denialists”, of all things?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> if it wasn’t bad enough already , the tripe this halfwit spews is enough to make one sick !
Who’s keeping that list , because it just keeps getting longer and longer .
How many more of these morally bankrupt simpletons have they got to wheel out ?
I’m so embarrassed for my country , it pains me to have to keep explaining to people outside Australia that most Aussies are quite intelligent and switched on .
Then they wheel this defective mental cripple out , what’s next a goddamn ape !,